Any info on Conway, SC (Myrtle Beach, St. Andrews: transplants, real estate, HOA fees)

[cmresearch]

I wanted to thank you all for some of the feedback you gave me on my last thread I wrote it has been a big help, greatly appreciated. But I was wondering does anybody down there have any info. on Conway, SC? I've done some research online on different areas down there and Conway was one of the areas that caught my att. with a few others. I really haven't heard much on that area. My husband and I are still trying to figure out which area we all can agree on. See he's going to be going out of state to work in GA possibly so I figured that Conway would be a good area for us while he is out of state, and he still would only be one state away. He's going to be working in Dalton, Ga. If anybody has any feedback on the Conway area or any area that might be best with him working in Dalton that would be great! Hope to here from you all Thanks again

[Global Friend]

I'm moving to Conway in two weeks. From the research I've done.....it's a large town that is becoming an extention of Myrtle Beach. Parts of it are still very rural, parts are very built up with housing developments & strip malls and there's a nice little downtown area. Go to the Chamber of Commerce site and you can request information to be sent to you. We found a great property for less than 200,000 and it's within 30 minutes of the airport and beach. Also, the people there seem very friendly.

[salatheel]

Conway is definitely becoming an extension of Myrtle Beach. It's a quaint little town that will become large quickly. My family and I like it but I was worried about getting a good paying job there. Do you have work lined up?

[Global Friend]

Kinda....

I do web design for small business, so I hope to work part time from home. I already have several sites I manage here in NJ and I will continue to do so from SC. My realtor has been telling me that real estate is great to get into there, so I'm seriously considering that. I also have a great deal of experience in managing small and large businesses, so that's another option. My boyfriend is moving with me and he works for one of the airlines and is keeping his job and will also do home inspections. We were told that's a good thing to get into also.

As far as "good paying job", compared to where I live now, I doubt I would make the same salary in a management position. Home inspections are the same price there as they are here. Keeping this in mind, the cost to live there is a fraction of what its costs me to live in NJ. I called for an auto insurance quote today and it was $575 and I pay $1,100 in NJ. My taxes are going to be around $1,000 in NJ the same house would be $12,000 to $16,000 Big difference.

[tfiletto]

Hello,

My name is Tom, I currently live in upstate NY but plan to relocate to the Myrtle Beach area when I retire in two years. If you are interested in a new home about 20 miles from the beach we have a very nice home in a small and friendly community in Longs, SC... called Polo Farms. Longs is only a few miles from Conway.

The home is 3 BR, 2 BA 2 car garage, ranch. No HOA fees. Very pleasant living area, minutes from highways 22 and 31 which bring you right in to Myrtle Beach or into North Myrtle Beach. Very good school system. This is a growing area in general yet with a country atmosphere. We would sell the home for under market value since we have purchased another home we already use as a second home and will eventually move into.

Please let me know if you are interested, we will be listing either with a realtor creating fees or list on FSBO. If we sell direct we would be able to sell under market value avoiding realtor fees, we would prefer to pass the savings to a potential buyer that would plan on living there.


Thank you for your time.
Tom Filetto 607-727-3745

[HokieinConway]

Hey,

I live in Conway and it's a very lovely town, if you meet the right people. I am not going to sugarcoat it and say that everyone here believes the Civil War is over and that they welcome outsiders with open arms, BUT there are a LOT of "transplants" just like my husband and myself. Once you can get past the fact that a lot of locals will snub you when you say "I'm from Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc.," I think you'll really like the town. The schools aren't fantastic, but there is a WONDERFUL private school in Myrtle Beach (St. Andrews) or you can look into paying for a voucher to send your children (if you have any) to Forestbrook. We love to go shopping in downtown Conway because it really is still a 'small town' with the local hardware store, and all of the wonderful boutiques and restaurants. One big downer for us is that there is no bookstore though. It's a good hodgepodge mix of old and new, and it's only going to get progressively newer over the next few years. Conway is certainly a place I'd look in to investing in, even if this won't be your 'I'll stay here forever' house. If you have any more questions, my email address is foxchasefsbo@aol.com and my AIM screenname is HokiePicc. Good luck with your move!!!

Jessica

[HokieinConway]

Oh, and PS Tom, they deleted my posts the other night about trying to FSBO my house as well, so be careful with what you post. There is a classified ad board if you go back out to the main forum and scroll all the way down past all of the states. Good luck with your sale!!!

Jessica

[heat]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some info on Conway. I have the opportunity to buy a house there for a great price but it needs a lot of work. I was wondering if there were certain parts of town that were undesirable places to live. Just wondering if the price reflected the area, or just the state of disrepair the house was in.

[Global Friend]

Originally Posted by heat

I was wondering if anyone could give me some info on Conway. I have the opportunity to buy a house there for a great price but it needs a lot of work. I was wondering if there were certain parts of town that were undesirable places to live. Just wondering if the price reflected the area, or just the state of disrepair the house was in.

Yes there are some undesirable areas in Conway. I would do a lot of research before buying a fixer upper. Great town and some really nice areas but if were me, I would invest in land here or a house that needs less work. There are still a lot of good deals here but you have to do some work to find them. You should have your realtor do a CMA on the house and also find out if it's in a flood zone. This is a great area but you do have to be careful when buying.

[azhlynne]

In July my family and I moved here to Conway from Maryland. It has been the worst experience in our entire lives. Rather than experiencing "warm, southern hospitality", we have discovered that here in this county where everyone knows everyone and everyone went to school with everyone else, outsiders are kept as outsiders.
My son attends one of the Elementary schools here in this "warm christian community". From literally day one he has been ostracized and bullied for no other reason than he can not stand flat on his feet due to a medical condition. One child smeared saliva onto my son's desk, my son has been slapped, hit, pushed, verbally bullied, and jabbed in his neck on one of his "pressure points" by another child. When one boy attempted to hit my son in his stomach, my son- as taught in karate class- blocked the attempt only to have the teacher call him hard headed! My every attempt to communicate with the teachers and finally the principal of this school has been met simply with silence. I have gone to the school several times and nothing is ever done to these hatefull children. A new teacher, from another state, joined the faculty a few weeks after school started and even he told me that he is having a hard time being accepted by the other 4th grade teachers. One telling incident was where a parent, against the school board rules, brought in cupcakes. This new teacher, my son is in his class now, refused to pass the cupcakes out. One of the other teachers told him: "you better pass them out. It is better not to **** off the parents than worry about doing something that the school board will never find out about!" 8 weeks into his being at the school, he still doesn't even have a dictionary in his classroom. The quality of the teaching is extremely poor, for example in Spelling one of the homework assignments is for the children to draw pictures and put the spelling words into the pictures. The pictures that the kids draw have nothing to do with the words!
Additionally, the neighborhood we moved into has been less than ideal as well. The people who live on one side of us let their 2 children just wander at will. The little girl is only 4 years old and her mother literally doesn't know where the child is. Both the little girl and her brother (aged 7) just started walking into our home without invitation, call from their mother, or even knocking. I walked out of my bedroom one night after taking a bath and there was the 7 year old standing in my kitchen! The mother would then leave her kids at my house and leave in her car, expecting me to babysit with no idea when she would return. Several of my son's toys went mysteriously missing when the little girl was here. When my husband finally said something to the father of these two children. They got mad at us! Now it is horribly uncomfortable even to walk outside when they are there. I'm not exactly sure how we are in the wrong. Also, the people who sold us our current home lied extensively on the Seller's Disclosure. We weren't in the house a month and we had to shell out almost $5000.00 to replace one of the two air conditioning units. On the Disclosure the owners stated that both units were the same age as the house, 7 years. Upon inspection we found that one unit was 14 years old and the other was 15 years old! When we tried to get more information about the units, we discovered that the serial numbers had been carefully cut off the label both inside and outside of both unit. Wonder why? Right after we spent all that money on the air conditioning, we were sitting in the kitchen during some rain and imagine our shock when we realized that the water was coming through the kitchen ceiling, running down the chain of our light fixture and dripping onto the table! The water was coming through the ceiling in 2 separate places. Going up into the attic, we saw that someone had secured a bucket in the trusses because of the water leaks in the roof. When we confronted the previous owners they just kept saying that they were good christians. Also, talking about schools, know that there are no after school clubs for the children. Where we came from there were a variety of fun things for the kids, lego club, chess club, indoor soccer, etc. Here there is only a bible class. In a public school. Horry County's (Where Conway is located) reading and math scores are low. There is a 15 year old boy who lives next door to us (on the other side from the rude people). He can barely read, did not know what a Coroner was when my husband said the word in a conversation. My 10 year old reads out loud better than this 15 year old. It is my opinion that this is a friendly place for tourists. If you think you are going to move here and just live your new life, it is way more complicated than that. If you have children and if you are concerned about their education DO NOT MOVE HERE!! My husband and I are very disillusioned with this place. We are seriously considering moving away from here. My son is being tormented, on Sunday nights he cries because he faces going back to school the next day. The school is not going to do anything about it because they are not going to risk making their own mad. This school issue extends far from just the school my son attends. The middle school he would be expected to attend next is so bad that one year the school its self actually gave parents the option of sending their children to a different school. That middle school is known for violence. Just recently, a 5th grader was caught in a different elementary school with a gun. That child is now on house arrest, with an ankle bracelet. 5th grade. The State Report Card from the NCLB AYP Summary shows that the AYP objectives have not been met, only 73 percent graduated in 2006, and overall student preformance has not been met. I hate it here. If I can keep just one person from making the mistake of moving here to Horry County South Carolina then I will be very glad. This is no place for children. I have nothing good to say other than that it is a nice place to visit, but you do not want to live here. Also, before you consider moving here you'd best check to see if you can get insurance for your home, in addition, you need to check and see if you will be able to find a doctor who takes your insurance. That is another serious problem for us down here. My husband has been in a union for his whole life. We have a union plan that is not taken here. Only a couple of weeks after we got here my son woke up in the middle of the night moaning in pain from an ear infection. I had no peditrician yet and found out the hard way that there is no Urgent Care center, or Night Time Pediactrics I could go to a midnight. I ended up taking him to the ER. We got a $465.00 bill for the ER, a separate bill from the ER doctor for $265.00. She misdiagnosed him, saying he had an inner ear infection and prescribed a very mild dosage of antibiotic. 8 days later he was still in so much pain that I took him to a doctor who said that the antibiotic could have been twice as much, but it wouldn't have helped him because he had swimmer's ear and needed antibiotic drops. The ear infection finally cleared up, but that ear infection cost us almost $1000.00!
Recently in the news there was a piece that stated that South Carolina is number one in the country for crime.
Please don't move here. This place is hell. Go somewhere else before it is too late.